Ivy the Kiwi? (Wii) review

"NO, this game has absolutely no connections with Kiwi Kraze (The New Zealand Story), other than they both use the word Kiwi in their titles. Ivy the Kiwi? has much more in common with Lemmings and Mario & Wario, where you are an invisible force that must guide a fast little bird through various mazes in a quest to find her mother. You aide the newborn by creating vines that'll help her climb over walls, or use them like shields against such dastardly foes as rats and water drops. Y..."

NO, this game has absolutely no connections with Kiwi Kraze (The New Zealand Story), other than they both use the word Kiwi in their titles. Ivy the Kiwi? has much more in common with Lemmings and Mario & Wario, where you are an invisible force that must guide a fast little bird through various mazes in a quest to find her mother. You aide the newborn by creating vines that'll help her climb over walls, or use them like shields against such dastardly foes as rats and water drops. You can even use the vines as slingshots to help smash through cracked walls, either towards a new path... or a bed of spikes. And believe me, you'll need to be creative and quick with these methods, especially since Ivy runs at such a fast rate, forcing you to make snap decisions on the go. There's even the added restriction of only having three vines on-screen at once, to prevent the game from becoming too easy.

Also, there's... actually, there's not much else to say about this game. That's by no means a bad thing, because there are plenty of titles with simple premises that are still entertaining. Ivy the Kiwi?, while providing the challenge of surviving to the end of each stage, gives the incentive of collecting orange feathers in every level. Except for gaining a 1-Up for every ten you grab, you don't really get any great rewards for snatching them, unless you're a hi-score nut. However, it's just a fun diversion to try to get all the feathers. Half the game's stages actually feel like they are modeled around finding the feathers than escaping, as in some instances, you can finish a level in a minute, but take almost all the time limit to go looking for every feather. And with there being 100 stages to play with, there's going to be a ton of feathers to collect.

Ivy the Kiwi? is a cute game with a storybook-look to it and plenty of mazes to navigate through, but there's this one big problem with the product that prevent it from being truly enjoyable: with its on-the-go pacing, the game requires precise controlling and aiming with the vines. And you can only use the Wii Remote.

Precise controlling and aiming.

Wii Remote.

See where I'm going with this?

No matter how good you get at the game, or how it may feel like you have a better hold on the controls, Ivy out-paces the Wii Remote's sensor controls in most cases. It's not obvious in the early, easy stages, but you'll notice this in the later ones, when enemy and spike placements are more strict. This, of course, causes you to panic, which then causes you to perform last second decisions, and thanks to the "wobbly" nature of the sensor controls, this does a lot of harm; if there's a rat just two inches away from your bird and you attempt to use a vine as a shield, chances are you're going to accidentally hit Ivy with the vine, pushing her towards the rat in the process. Now imagine a situation where you need to go up where two spiked walls are facing your direction. And you need to bring along a boulder. Yeah. Some of you will think I'm crazy for saying this, but an option to use the Classic Controller would have been a good alternative for the game. Do you get what I'm saying here? That's as bad as saying using a D-Pad in a FPS title would be an improvement, because the analog sticks suck.

Considering Ivy the Kiwi? was originally on Windows Mobile/Phone, which includes a stylus, you'd think a more appropriate port would have been the Nintendo DS. I mean, with the DS stylus, you would have much more control over your actions in the game, which in turn translates into a more smooth and enjoyable experience. It's a shame they didn't release a cheaper version on the DS the same day it came out on the Wii...

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pickhut posted September 04, 2010:

*comes home from work*

*clicks topic*

zigfried posted September 04, 2010:

The Wii controls sound horrible. Have you played the DS version?

//Zig

pickhut posted September 04, 2010:

No, but I have seen quite a number of DS videos, and it does look like an improvement. This is also why I didn't go as far as to say in the review that the DS version is better, only saying it would make more sense to be there instead of on the Wii.

zigfried posted September 04, 2010:

Thanks, I was just curious if it was decent or if they did something weird that caused it to be lame for an entirely different reason. If I didn't already have a million games to get through, I might give it a shot.

//Zig

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